Companies and organizations rely on several ways to present their products, services or information to a potential market or customer. One of the most effective means is to demonstrate the product or service features or present the information via personal interaction directly with the potential customer or user. Some of the techniques include food sampling and promotional hand-out stations in supermarkets, often referred to as "product sampling". Such marketing campaigns generally last for one to several days. A portable table is typically set up in an aisle for product display and sampling, and then taken down for storage until the next use or for transport to another location. Normally, such tables do not provide for effective display of a graphic identifying the product or service being offered, nor do they usually provide a convenient storage area.
Portable tables or booths are used in a number of other situations, including registration tables at special events, serving tables at banquets, product information stands at trade shows and temporary podiums at meetings. These events may last from a few hours to a couple of weeks. Such situations require a temporary, portable table or booth. Generally, presenters may be unskilled at setting up tables or booths requiring complicated assembly and manipulation of separate parts with special tools. Skilled personnel may then be needed for set-up of the exhibit. The time and cost of the presentation is thereby undesirably increased.
The tables most commonly used may be folding card tables with cloth skirts, tables with wood or laminate surfaces, and portable tables or booths assembled from individual parts. Presentations using a typical folding card table suffer from having a top surface inconveniently low for walk-up clientele, and also lack discreet yet accessible storage space. Non-folding tables are heavy, bulky, take up valuable storage space, and are costly and time-consuming to transport. To the knowledge of these inventors, no portable display booth or table currently available offers integral backlit display of graphics.
Backlighted graphic displays are usable in a wide variety of situations calling for an eye-catching display of graphics, advertising or text.